Latest blockchain news: September 2025

We wrapped up September with plenty of updates, like the provisional date for Fusaka, Ethereum’s upcoming upgrade; Celestia’s Matcha upgrade; and Solana’s new podcast.

Stick around to catch up on the latest blockchain news!

We’ve joined the validator set of Avail (modular DA for the next-gen rollups) and Union (zk L1 for cross-chain messaging and interoperability). If you want to support the network, you can delegate with us!

As part of a strategic decision, we stopped operating as validators for KILT Protocol, LTO Network, and Agoric.

We’re the first operator to implement intra-operator DVT with Obol in Lido’s Curated Module, and we’ve also adopted SSV in our StakeWise operator.

Choose from shared, dedicated, or archive nodes with monthly or yearly subscriptions. We ensure 99.9% uptime and full control from a self-service dashboard.

We’ve added support for the Ethereum execution layer, Somnia, and Union to our Web3 Load Balancer to improve dApp speed, scalability, and security through our load-balanced APIs.

We renewed our SOC 2 Type II certification for the second year in a row, proving our strong internal security and controls. The audit verifies security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

New milestones in Aptos: RWAs exceed $723.8M; TVL nears $794M; 3.8M daily transactions and 3.4M weekly active users.

Proposal 154 successfully executed: multi-step update of the mainnet framework to version v1.34.0.

Avalanche Foundation strengthens global strategy with Lord Chris Holmes joining the board: British legislator and tech regulation pioneer brings governance and policy experience to drive responsible blockchain adoption.

Avalanche integrates with Ethena, Pendle, and PayPal USD to boost the ecosystem with new stable assets, structured yield markets, and global payment-ready stablecoins.

Retro9000 fuels Avalanche innovation: Over $1.25M has already been distributed among builder projects, with more reward rounds and a fund to accelerate ecosystem growth.

In South Korea, BDACS and Woori Bank launch KRW1, a fully collateralized stablecoin pegged to the won aimed at transforming payments and public programs with lower costs and more transparency.

Celestia slashes transaction finality times from 6 seconds to 300 ms thanks to consensus layer upgrades, enabling near-instant payments and rollups.

Celestia activates Matcha, its v6 upgrade: 128 MB blocks, 50% inflation reduction, and support for acting as a routing layer for cross-chain assets.

Celo mainnet undergoes Ice Cream hardfork: this upgrade activates EigenDA v2, reducing confirmation latency, improving performance, and paving the way for OP Succinct Lite integration.

Celo launches “Mini App Mondays”: a weekly initiative rewarding users in CELO for testing new native Farcaster apps.

Hilbert Capital, a Nasdaq-listed asset manager, makes a historic move by investing in CCD amid regulatory changes from MiCA and the GENIUS Act. CCD surges 138% in 24 hours and 377% over the last month.

Concordium expands its PayFi ecosystem with USD, EUR, GBP, and AED: through partnerships with StablR, VNX, and ColbFinance, the network enables new stablecoin apps for cross-border payments, remittances, and adoption.

New Ambassador Programme: a global initiative allowing participants to promote the brand, engage the community, and earn rewards ranging from badges and merch to CCD.

New launches are making interaction within Cosmos easier:

• Skip:Go launches its live explorer, allowing users to track swaps and cross-chain transactions with the same simplicity as moving assets anywhere.

• Range launches Stablecoin Explorer, a tool to monitor global stablecoin adoption across multiple blockchains in real time.

Europe drives the shift to on-chain finance at Cosmoverse 2025: central banks and political leaders will discuss the digital euro and Cosmos’ role in this modernization.

Covalent strengthens its ecosystem and community involvement with new incentives for Light Client testers, WallChain rewards structure, and CXT buyback plans — marking the next phase of network growth and consolidation.

Reth Incident: On September 2 at 02:20 UTC, a critical bug in Reth caused most Ethereum nodes to crash, but Stakely remained operational thanks to a multi-client architecture using Reth, Nethermind, and Geth, which took over automatically.

Ethereum announces a “tentative” date for the Fusaka upgrade: December 3, 2025. Holešky testnet will be shut down after this. A $2M audit contest on Sherlock has also been launched — find Fusaka vulnerabilities over four weeks and get rewarded.

Validator entry queue surpasses exit queue: 140K+ ETH waiting, almost 1M ETH set to enter, and 29% of total supply already staked.

Lido CSM has hit its cap again! Get ready for when Lido increases its capacity and allows new validators. Generate your deposit data now with Stakely’s Simple CSM and be among the first to take advantage of Lido’s CSM — enabling ETH staking with just 2.4 ETH.

Initia boosts its “North Star” with major updates to Wallet, App, and Scan: performance improvements, new features, and a smoother user experience.

New accelerator program offers up to $1M for projects building on its L1 — driving innovation and attracting entrepreneurial talent.

Injective’s EVM is coming to mainnet before Q4 2025, marking a key milestone in ecosystem expansion.

New feature enables transferring INJ stake without unstaking, making active position management easier.

New Momentum incentive program: teams can apply for user acquisition support in exchange for rewards, creating a win-win growth model.

Monad Client goes open source and launches an audit contest with a $500K prize pool on Code4rena — open for 27 days to strengthen protocol security and transparency. Ends October 13!

New backend improves shielded transaction experience: faster proving times and better usability for protected actions.

Upcoming improvements:

• Namada tweaks Namadillo v2, with a limited launch coming soon.
• Namada will upgrade its mainnet to v201.0.X, after fixing bugs on Housefire testnet with v201.0.4 and integrating infrastructure and Polaris.
• IBC Eureka progresses: Namada already supports one-click transfers to Ethereum mainnet and is working on integrating shielding/unshielding features via IBC.

Updates on NEAR Intents: over $1B in total volume; mainnet now scales to 9 shards; and total NEAR staking exceeds $600M. A partnership with Aptos and Shelby allows one-click BTC-to-APT swaps without bridges, plus access to fast, decentralized storage with NEAR AI.

NEAR Legion launches ‘Legion Baddies’, a Web3 women-focused initiative offering referral rewards and a mission to build NEAR’s future.

NEAR’s Shade Agents kick off autonomous on-chain businesses, blending decentralized AI, TEEs, and multichain control.

OmniFlix expands to FLIX.fun and jumps to Ethereum and EVM, starting with Base: the platform will let creators launch their own websites to showcase and manage their work, powered by FLIX and Media DePIN infrastructure.

• FLIX migrates from OmniFlix to Base, pausing on-chain rewards temporarily during the transition, which opens new use cases for holders and users. The community remains active through campaigns like FUNQuiz, FLIXMeme, and FLIXFriday.

FLIX.fun opens Node Host registrations: users can join the waitlist to power streams, scale culture, and turn bandwidth into influence in the new decentralized internet.

FLIX.fun launches Creator Homepage: interactive on-chain profiles with multimedia content powered by Media DePIN — now open to exclusive creator applications.

Osmosis surpasses $21M in total protocol revenue, reinforcing staking rewards, BTC accumulation, and community fund growth.

Osmosis launches v30 upgrade: includes security and performance enhancements, and enables creation of permissionless pools.

Osmosis burns 435,883 OSMO from max supply using taker fees, setting another monthly record for the protocol.

Osmosis Support Lab shuts down operations and will no longer seek funding — thanking the community for its years of support.

Persistence kicks off its biggest technical upgrade to v0.53.x: the network will transition from Cosmos SDK v0.47 to v0.53 in four phases, enhancing security, aligning with ecosystem standards, and preparing for integration with Babylon — leaving behind its custom liquid staking module.

Persistence DEX publishes practical guide to use its Multi-Swap feature: learn how to swap multiple tokens in one operation on both Core-1 Chain and Babylon Genesis Network, with defined minimum outputs and key tips to avoid gas or balance errors.

Polkadot 2.0 takes a decisive step forward: Referendum 1721 unanimously approves RFC103, enabling Async Backing, Agile Coretime, and Elastic Scaling to improve rollup scalability.

Polkadot rewards you:

• DeFi Builders Program: an initiative for DeFi founders where 5 teams will receive mentorship, financial support, and visibility.

• Origins Hackathon at TOKEN2049 Singapore: 36 hours of dev time, mentorship, and $85K in prizes.

• Polkadot Builder Party Hackathon: six weeks, three categories, and $40K in prizes to boost dApp development.

Polkadot clarifies its strategy with JAM: the relay chain is renamed JAM chain, with Polkadot remaining the main brand. OpenGov continues as the governance pillar, and validators can use more powerful hardware without leaving standards.

Polkadot sets supply cap at 2.1 billion DOT after Referendum 1710 passes with 81% support — reducing emissions and increasing long-term scarcity versus the current model of 120M DOT per year.

What does it mean? Supply will grow only 29% in 135 years, with emissions dropping from 7.4% to 3.3% by March 2026.

Secret launches PrivateVM: a new mode that disables all data leak points while enabling selective verification — unlocking use cases like private messaging, Tor relays, and sensitive apps.

Solana Incubator kicks off its third cohort: 6 startups will build the next generation of onchain projects.

SOL Strategies gets approval to list on Nasdaq: the fund begins trading under ticker STKE, marking its entry into public markets.

RWA value rises 34.5% in 30 days, reaching $671.3M with over 76,000 holders.

New milestones in Sonic: over 130 million transactions, 15K+ active contracts, and 225 apps like Aave using Fee Monetization — which returns up to 90% of fees to developers to help scale projects.

Sonic holds its first governance vote, focused on institutional expansion with a U.S. ETP/ETF, Nasdaq DAT listing, and creation of Sonic USA.

New DeFi milestone with over $100M in stablecoins: total delegated value hits an ATH of $104.4M — up 52% in the last 30 days and 19% in the past 24 hours.

Re7 unveils new Yield Aggregator on Starknet for Ekubo pools: deposit once and earn yield automatically — no need to rebalance manually or constantly monitor LP positions.

New Re{solve} hackathon: a month-long event aiming to build useful, real-world projects in the ecosystem, with a prize pool of over $50K.

Around 2 million SUI tokens have been burned, half of them in the last six months — with a fixed supply of 10B and a fund that removes tokens from circulation.

Sui launches its GraphQL and Indexer stack in beta, offering developers scalable and flexible access to real-time and historical on-chain data.

Did you know liquid staking is available on Walrus? You can convert your WAL into liquid staking tokens (LSTs) that earn rewards, secure the network, and are usable in DeFi with Haedal and WalrusLST.

Everlyn AI now runs on Walrus: turn images into videos in seconds, with on-chain data, real-time model updates, and smart payments via Sui. They’re also launching an AI video contest to tell the stories of Walrus and Seal — 50 winners and $5,000 in LYN prizes.

Frostlytics launches analytics dashboard for Walrus: WAL holders now have access to performance metrics, staking, activity, and protocol growth insights.

For the second year in a row, we’re supporting Merge Madrid — the go-to institutional blockchain event. To warm things up, we’re hosting Warm Up Merge Madrid by Stakely on October 7 at 7:00 p.m. — the perfect meetup for validators, investors, and builders before the big event.

Register now and we’ll see you in Madrid! Don’t miss your chance to win a free ticket to MERGE Madrid — join our giveaway! 🎁